Saddleworth has softened since I knocked on the last of thousands of doors back in 1979 with the urgent message that only Richard Wainwright could staunch the tide of conservative self-interest, be it clad in blue or red.

Fewer local people now work in textile mills or other heavy industry, and many more in clean hi-techery or craft and teashops. But two features of the lovely Pennine landscape and its distinctive politics are far from dead.

One is the element of faith in the area's brand of Liberalism, which unnerved Labour neighbours by matching their own. Socialists were not the only idealists marching to a new Jerusalem; the Liberal Club and chapel, seldom far apart, were blueprints here on Earth. In the pews was another feature of the party which has survived, indeed prospered: local councillors who fought pavement politics in the spirit of prime minister Harold Wilson's father. A West Riding Liberal, Wilson senior greeted the party's few victories in his day by singing, accompanying himself on the piano: "Sound the loud trumpet o'er land and o'er sea, Jeshurun hath triumphed, his children are free."

Stereotypes of the Lib-Lab, boss-worker relationship were muddled in other ways; one of Labour's panjandrums, Lord Rhodes of Saddleworth, owned a mill in Delph whose staff, only partly in jest, included a whip in his retirement gifts.

The other lasting political feature is tactical voting, key to each of the slender majorities – 856, 719 and 187 – which almost always saw the seat go against the national grain. In the Holme and Colne valleys, we spoke with foreboding about the supposed number of Tories in Saddleworth; in Saddleworth, the ploy was the other way round.

My most extreme experience was mopping up a "possible Tory nest" of barn conversions in Running Hill Gate and topping talk of Labour's might in Holmfirth and Meltham, with a promise to send a postcard from my honeymoon if the Libs won. They did and I did, to remarkable understanding from Penny, my bride, who, also in the tradition of Saddleworth politics, has stuck with it for 32 years.

The deputy prime minister and leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, says his party came a strong second in the Oldham East and Saddleworth byelection, which was won by Labour candidate Debbi Abrahams

Victory for Labour in Britain's first parliamentary byelection since the formation of the coalition last May as Debbie Abrahams beat the Liberal Democrat candidate Elwyn Watkins by 14,718 to 11,160 to be the next MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth